Carbonade, an Israeli cleantech company founded in 2022, has developed an integrated system of Direct Air Capture and electrolyzer to efficiently capture CO₂ from the air and convert it into syngas. Syngas can be used to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), methanol, and polymers. Carbonade’s innovative approach contributes to climate change mitigation.
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Challenges: carbon-neutral fuel
Human activities, particularly fossil fuel burning and deforestation, have elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels. In 2023, CO₂ concentrations exceeded 420 parts per million (ppm). CO₂ is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. Excessive CO₂ contributes to climate change and global warming. There is an urgent need for carbon capture technologies and sustainable energy solutions.
Carbon capture technologies like Direct Air Capture (DAC) can capture and remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. DAC systems typically use either solid sorbents or liquid solvents to bind CO₂ and separate it for storage or utilization. This technology can be deployed anywhere with access to low-carbon energy and CO₂ storage infrastructure.
The captured CO₂ combined with clean hydrogen (H₂) makes synthetic hydrocarbons, also called carbon-neutral fuels, e-fuels, or synthetic fuels. These synthetic fuels can serve as drop-in replacements for existing fossil fuels, requiring no modifications to current engines or infrastructure. Importantly, when burned, e-fuels release only as much CO₂ as was captured during their production, making them potentially carbon neutral over their lifecycle.
The economics of carbon-neutral fuel production are heavily influenced by the costs of DAC and clean hydrogen production.
DAC currently comes with high costs of $600 to $1,000 per ton of CO₂. The high costs are largely attributed to its energy-intensive processes, particularly calcination for CO₂ recovery and the regeneration of capture agents. However, by 2050, the cost can be potentially reduced to $100-$300 per metric ton of CO₂.
Green hydrogen production through renewable energy-powered electrolysis currently ranges from $4 to $12 per kilogram. The industry is actively working towards reducing these costs, with ambitious targets set to bring the price below $2 per kilogram in the near future.
Carbonade Technology
Carbonade has developed an innovative integrated system that combines DAC with an electrolysis process to convert atmospheric CO₂ and water into syngas.
Syngas serves as a feedstock for producing valuable products, such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), methanol, and polymers. Carbonade’s technology eliminates the expensive feedstock of pure CO₂ from energy-intensive DAC and green hydrogen from water electrolysis. This significantly reduces energy consumption and improves the efficiency, thus reducing the cost of syngas for producing sustainable fuels and other chemicals.
How Carbonade produces syngas
The diagram below depicts Carbonade’s integrated system integrating DAC with an electrolyzer to convert atmospheric CO₂ and water into syngas.